


we sail upon forgotten waters

by livtontea



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (all offscreen), Alternate Universe, Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Ben Hargreeves is a Good Brother, Body Horror, Gen, Gift Fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mild Gore, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Original Character Death(s), Pirates, a little bit of purple prose... as a treat, five is 13, kind of betaed but kind of... not, siblings bonding? a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:29:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22444114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livtontea/pseuds/livtontea
Summary: Extraordinary.God. No. Not him.Extraordinaryimplies some sort of… grandeur. Something remarkable, something… wonderful, maybe. Special.Ben is just a freak.
Relationships: Ben Hagreeves & Original Character(s), Number Five | The Boy & Ben Hargreeves
Comments: 13
Kudos: 46





	we sail upon forgotten waters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evelinaonline](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evelinaonline/gifts).



> hello hello! i am back with a new fic, which just so happens to be a birthday gift for the most wonderful [@evelinaonline](https://evelinaonline.tumblr.com/)!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVE!! you better have a wonderful day! and a wonderful year! ily <33
> 
> i have quite a bit of OCs in this one, i hope that's okay! nobody plays too much of a starring role, but they are definitely there and important. warnings for this fic are: minor gore; mentions of death (past); body horror; physical trauma (wounds) (minor); and the usual self-hatred/self-loathing.
> 
> thank you bree for reading over the first half of this for me!!
> 
> feel free to point out any of my grammar errors and/or typos, and without further ado, enjoy! :]

Ben—not Benjamin, never Benjamin, and whoever says otherwise needs to stop spreading lies—Hargreeves, is completely and totally unphased by the…

The word _extraordinary_ doesn’t bring up any good memories. It reaches deep into him, like a hand reaching into Ben’s paper-bag self and pulling out worms, or something equally gross, like a particularly dirty stocking, or a mudpie, or… he can think of many things. But it isn’t pleasant. Never pleasant.

Stepping out of the familiar and comfortable territory of metaphors, he thinks, he would really rather not go around whispering words like _extraordinary_ to himself and pulling up thoughts of his sister, caricatures of his other siblings following suit. He’d much prefer to stick with something easier, something simpler, something that defines him as much as the things he is by now desensitized to.

_Abnormal. Weird. Strange. Unnatural._

He’s… Well. He’s met many a creature like him, and even after all this time, is hesitant to label himself as _human._ Not that he isn’t, well, human. He is, surely. He has two hands, and two legs; opposable thumbs. He can communicate complex thoughts. Or, try to, because more often than not Ben finds his words jammed deep inside his throat, fading into the shadows along with the rest of him.

Ben is… Well, Ben is Ben, and maybe not _Ben,_ not all the time, but he feels like a Ben, and that’s the name he’s been given. Ben. Ben Hargreeves. Not Benjamin. Never Benjamin. Benjamin is a not-quite-nickname he’s left behind, thrown aside as he metamorphosed into what he is now, shed like butterfly wings or snakeskin. He’s only ever heard that name—only ever had it pressed to his ear like the blade of a knife is pressed against the tender flesh of a throat—in mockery and humor. Not a nickname. Just a joke.

He thinks he’d have liked to be called Benjamin, maybe, in some other life. Some other life where he was born like all other children are; a life where there are no monsters and no suffocating and definitely no soul-crushing melancholy that now wraps him like a thick and very heavy blanket. But that isn’t his life. His life is filled with horror, and grief, and pain piled on top of everything like pillows are piled on a fort.

He really likes metaphors. They keep him away from the hard edges of reality. The sharp claws of the infinite monsters hiding beneath his bed, no matter where he goes and how many cots he sleeps in.

More often than not he finds himself staring up at the bottom side of a mattress.

But really. Ben is familiar with abnormal. Drawn to it, almost—the pull in his chest that doesn’t quite belong to him drawing him farther and farther away from the safety of…

Before.

Now he is adrift.

Literally. He is. He’s on his ship, his own ship—it’s his now, even though it once belonged to somebody else. Many other people have once sailed on this ship, stood at the helm and watched the fog envelop the mast; the sea winds fill up the sails. Now Ben stands there, hands on the wheel, maneuvering his vessel through the dark sea.

He doesn’t feel the salty waves wash over the sides of the _Deathly Horror_ and splash onto his body, doesn’t pay any mind to the strong gusts of wind blowing at his cloak. He doesn’t feel much at all.

“Captain!” calls out a voice emerging from below deck. “Captain, where we headed?” It’s Anne—confirmed by a quick glance from the corner of his eye, her mop of red hair hard to miss, even with the stormy weather.

Ben lets go of the wheel with one hand, keeping one tight around the steer and pressing the other one to his stomach. Today it aches. Yesterday he felt like he was being ripped apart. A week ago his skin split open. Today he aches.

“South,” he says decisively.

“Just south? That it?” Anne walks closer to him, propping a hand on her hip and smirking in that friendly way not many people can achieve. She likes to needle him, even though he’s her superior, technically. They both know that’s bullshit though. Here on the ship, everybody is practically family. Only Ben stands a little bit apart, cloaked in fabric and shadows that paint sharp lines across his face. “You’re awfully terrible with directions, for a ship’s captain.”

“Very funny,” says Ben, eyebrows raised. “We’ll go where we need to get—you know this.”

Anne sighs. “Yeah… I do. Don’t have to like it, though.”

“Me too, Annie. Me, too.”

Anne hits him on the shoulder, swaying him. “Told ya not to call me that.”

Ben grins, letting some mischief seep into his voice. “So I’m not allowed to give you a nickname, but Mary is? That hardly seems fair.”

Anne’s face flushes as red as her hair. “That’s different, and you know it,” she hisses. Ben laughs.

“How so?”

Anne cries out in a short display of her fraudy anger, and punches him in the shoulder again. Ben delivers a swift kick to the back of her knee, sending her toppling backward. She hits at his legs from where she is now on the floor—he hops over her hands. It’s a fun little game they play sometimes, knowing neither one can hurt the other. Their touches, no matter how forceful, always come across as fleeting.

“Ben?” comes a voice from below the deck. Tammy’s head pops up in the opening. “Oh, Anne, hello to you too!”

“Heya, Tammy,” she says. Anne stops attacking Ben and gets up off the floor. “What brings you up so early?”

The not-quite-man wrinkles his nose. “It’s late.”

“It is _not._ ”

“Is too,” says Tammy, and then sticks his tongue out at her. Anne is not above sticking her tongue back. Ben snorts, and keeps steering the ship through the night.

“Ben,” says Tammy, already next to him, leaning over his shoulder and beginning to spread himself everywhere like butter on bread. “Be-e-en.”

“What?”

“Where we going?”

“Ask Anne. I just told her.”

Tammy turns to Anne with an eager expression, and receives a quick flick to the forehead. A startled laugh falls out of Ben’s mouth. Tammy yelps in pain and reaches up to rub at the spot she hit him, a childish pout on his face.

“That’s mean!”

“Maybe _I’m_ mean,” says Anne. “The meanest of them all.”

“You’re not,” says Ben, suddenly loose-lipped. "You're not. Trust me."

Anne lapses into an uncomfortable silence, always one for quieting when the emotions she's so attuned to come to light. It's kind of funny, how she's so good at social cues and mood changes, yet so bad at handling feelings. Fortunately, Tammy’s much more emotionally competent, and is there to save the conversation from the tension of Ben's words.

"What? Are you saying you're meaner? Because that is _hard_ to believe, oh captain, my captain."

Ben smiles, thankful for the shift away from his thinly hidden and seemingly endless problems. "Hey, I can be plenty mean."

Anne and Tammy both snort. Ben rolls his eyes.

The thing is, he loves them. He really does—loves his crew like he’d love his family; like he loved his family. They’ve become a second one to him, all of them a tight-knit crew aboard the ship. There’s not many of them, but there’s more than the six people he used to share a home with.

The shifts always come suddenly.

Abruptly, the _Deathly Horror_ lurches to the left, nearly spilling the trio on deck overboard. Ben grabs onto the wheel, and Anne grabs onto Ben, and then Tammy grabs onto Anne.

“What was that?”

Anne’s voice can barely be heard over the rage of the storm, now. “Ben? What was that?” This time, it’s more insistent.

He knows what’s about to happen.

“Get below deck,” he barks—captain’s orders. Tammy opens his mouth to protest, but Ben snaps, _“Now.”_ He isn’t letting them get caught up in this—he never has, and he isn’t starting now.

Anne takes Tammy’s hand, and they throw one last look at Ben before making a run for the cabin entrance.

Ben takes a deep breath, and unclasps his cloak, bundling up the fabric and tossing it behind him. He’ll get a new one. His stomach is pulsing with an aching pain, growing sharper by the second.

The sea looks like it’s boiling. Angry white foam spills off from water that looks black in the dark of the storm, the dark of the night making it even darker, washing over the decks. The _Deathly Horror_ is thrown from side to side, and Ben is thrown with it. He makes his way to the front of his ship, shielding himself from the saltwater spraying in his face. The skin on his stomach feels like it’s boiling—and it looks like it’s rumbling, just a thin layer of flesh keeping something sinister from bursting out into the slashing rain.

Ben is at the bow of the _Horror._ Feeling like enough air will never again reach his lungs, he looks down into the swirling water, and throws open his arms—almost like he’s trying to give the entire world an embrace.

His torso rips open.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ben registers screaming, his own voice mingling with the otherworldly crackling static of skin being torn and monsters unfurling from his body into the air. The damp tentacles explode from his chest like confetti, infiltrating the air of his world. They thrash and wave, and Ben _screams_.

The ship is rocking, back and forth, back and forth, heavy rain and crashes of thunder enveloping it. Ben’s hair is flat against his head, water running from his soaked clothes and dripping onto the wooden floorboards of the ship’s deck, flowing down and mixing with the sea’s waves.

The next moments are filled with pain—agonizing, terrible pain. He isn’t new to this, not at all, but the knowledge that he can’t split open a second time doesn’t do much to ease the blinding agony. The storm is raging, crashes of lighting hitting faraway land in time with Ben’s shrieks. Anguish colors his vision.

The horrors from within writhe in the air as if they’re flying—they spread everywhere, as if they’re trying to envelop everything they touch and take it for themselves. They dip into the ocean waters, splashing salty streaks across the ports. The streaks don’t stay, running back down into the sea with the rainwater.

It all stops as quickly as it started. The creatures slither back into Ben’s body, skin joining back together at the edges. He takes a shuddering breath as he collapses to his knees, feeling the loose flesh quiver against his bone.

Heavy footsteps rush out, and Mary’s arms hug him from behind. She’s alone—thankfully.

“Hey,” she says. Ben doesn’t move. He feels like he’s going to split at the seams all over again.

“Hi.”

“Are you okay?” Mary, always the first to ask about their health. Oh, god, he’s so glad to have her here.

“Yeah. What would I do without you?” It’s a joke, of sorts—they both know what would have become of their crew without Mary there to guide them away from the interludes of dark despair they think up for themselves.

Mary smiles into his back. “You wouldn’t be here.”

Ben slowly puts his hand over Mary’s. Her skin is warm, damp from the storm, even though she was below deck.

“What now, Ben?”

Her captain looks out over the horizon, where a dark shape is coming into view. It’s half-hidden by the fog swirling around his ship. Soon it’s going to be closer—much closer. The creatures are always a sign, or maybe a cause. Either way, he knows what comes next.

“Do you have my cloak?”

“Below deck,” Mary says. “I can go get one. That was worse than usual, Ben, are you sure you’re alright?”

Ben stills his shaking hands. “I’m fine, Mary. Could you go get a cloak for me?”

Mary nods, and lets go. She straightens to her full height, no longer crouching on the ground to comfort Ben. Her dark hair flutters behind her as she goes to retrieve the garment. Anne must be waiting for her return, not sure it’s safe until her lover gets back to her.

He’s left alone on the bow of the ship, sitting like he’s rooted to the floorboards. His hand is still hanging in the air where it rested over Mary’s. That word floats up in his mind once more.

 _Extraordinary._ God. No. Not him.

 _Extraordinary_ implies some sort of… grandeur. Something remarkable, something… wonderful, maybe. Special.

Ben is just a freak.

The ship in the distance drifts closer. If Ben squints, he can make out shapes on the vessel, people climbing the mast to and from the crow’s nest. Ben takes a deep breath, and stands to walk back to the wheel.

He’s a dead man on a ghost ship, and their next encounter is about to get a nasty shock.

The holes in Ben’s chest match the ones on the back of Tammy’s head—his are easy to hide, the boy’s long dark hair falling over the wounds. Ben’s are more in the open, his vest often unbuttoned to not put pressure on his stomach.

Anne died before them all—she has a sword wound through her chest. Mary doesn’t have marks. Her hair drips little puddles on the floor when she doesn’t tie it up.

His entire crew is filled with oozing blood and gaping wounds and clammy flesh. He’s a dead man on a dead ship, with a dead crew, sailing the sea. Ben directs the _Horror_ to the other vessel—best to make it quick.

Mary comes back on deck with a cloak in her hands. Her firm hands take the wheel from him as he clasps the garment over his shoulders. It flows freely in the wind. Soon the rest of his crew is out on the deck of the ship, guns and swords in their hands.

As the ship comes closer, Ben can’t help but grin. This is his favorite part—the loves the freedom of it. The unabashed silence. Peter and Ren begin climbing their way up to the top of the mainmast, taking their position in the crow’s nest. Adrian pulls up their flag—a little octopus wrapping itself around a skull. The captain’s mark wrapping itself around death—it seemed fitting at the time. Tammy insists it’s still fitting now, and Ben doesn’t disagree.

They aren’t pirates—not quite. It’s hard to pirate things when you’re dead, but all of them had been buccaneers, or had dreamt of becoming ones. Not a single soul on here doesn't love what they're doing, even though it can get slow, drifting around the open ocean, waiting for a ship of living sailors to get in their path.

Anne and Mary, along with little Richie, are getting out the playing cards. Ben never joins—he’s shit at cards.

“Hey, cap’n?”

Ben turns. Josie’s standing there, squinting at the rapidly approaching ship. Her wild hair is tucked behind her ears, flying out to frame her face every other moment. She keeps stubbornly swiping the strands behind her ears, and they keep stubbornly popping back out. The wind blows.

“Don’t that say, uh… _Um… brella? Umbrella Acad… Academy?_ That a weird name for a ship, ain’t it?”

Ben feels his blood run cold. It can’t be. It _can’t._ There’s no way.

The other ship’s flag is a black umbrella on a white background.

It is.

Ben grits his teeth. Josie looks at him curiously. “Cap’n?”

“Get ready,” he says. “We’re coming close.”

“...’Kay.”

The other ship that Ben used to know so well undulates on the moving water. If he squints, he can see familiarity in the vague figures of people. There’s one, taller and wider than he remembers, and another, short and holding a fiddle. A shipful of freaks, coming closer and closer.

Ben may be the one on the ghost ship, but this one feels like one, at the moment—a ghost from his past, dragging up unwanted memories from its watery grave.

He knows they can see him. He knows they can read the name of his ship. He knows they’re close enough for somebody to swim over and tap the side of the _Horror,_ like some kind of game of tag.

They drift past the _Academy_ silently. Ben’s crew turns to look at it, watching the people on board gaping at the ghost ship. Ben snorts. He knows they didn’t believe in ghost ships until now—he certainly hadn’t. His stomach churns with anxiety.

There’s only silence—not counting the waves lapping at the sides of the two vessels— in the air. Ben takes a deep breath as their paths diverge—soon the _Academy_ will be nothing more than a speck in the distance, shoved aside in his mind and hopefully forgotten about.

Somebody screams.

Ben whips around to see Richie yelling at the sudden appearance of a kid. The cards he was holding are scattered around where he was sat, aces and sevens and queens and kings, all lying on the floor with their painted-on smiles. The outsider is dressed in a blue uniform, a uniform Ben recognizes, a uniform Ben _knows,_ a uniform he hasn’t seen in years…

Blue eyes meet black.

The kid stumbles back, face slack with shock. His hair is swept to the side in a neat wave, his necktie is crisp and neat across the center of his chest, the sleeves of the white shirt he’s wearing barely cover his wrists. There’s a dagger hanging at his hip. He’s young—too young. When he speaks, his voice sounds choked.

_“Ben?”_

It’s Five.

Little Five who was gone long before Ben took his turn, Five who was always grinning and telling them _he’ll take care of it_ , Five who never took a new name, Five who had spent many a night making Ben sandwiches and telling him that Father doesn’t have to know. Five who should, by all means, be a man by now—Five who is just a boy.

“...Five…”

Five jumps across the deck to right in front of Ben. _That’s_ how he got on the ship; _that’s_ how he used to make his way up and down the masts in record time. It’s his own personal little abnormality. His own hidden mumble of _extraordinary_.

Ben wants to run. He’d put this all behind himself, all of it—his old life, his old family, his… his _everything._ Ben Hargreeves is _dead_. And now a piece from his past is standing right in front of him, eyes watering—looking like he’s about to burst into tears. Ben wants to run, and run, and run, and rip himself apart in the process—again and again and again—and never look back.

“ _Ben…_ ” Five repeats. “Is it… Is it really you?”

Ben can feel the words cramming themselves into his throat, prying open his mouth and threatening to spill out onto his tongue. He wants to shake his head, wants to deny everything and then part ways for good—but this is _Five,_ and he can’t do that to him.

“Yeah,” he croaks. “Yeah, it’s—it’s me.”

“They told me you were dead,” Five gasps out, tears already welling up in his childlike eyes. Ben can feel his stomach twist and turn—he has an idea of what his brother is about to say. “I knew you weren’t, I knew it!”

Five looks ready to snatch Ben’s hand and drag him back aboard the _Umbrella Academy_ where he thinks he belongs. The _Academy_ —filled with life and eerie silence, filled with fear of glinting monocles and sharp-tipped canes. Ben sees his brother, a brother who’s been lost a long, long time ago—and he doesn’t want to be the one to shatter his newfound illusion.

“I can’t,” says Ben, “I can’t go back. Not there, not to—not to Dad.”

“Yes you can,” Five insists, suddenly much younger than he was moments ago. His voice is filled with childlike determination. “You can go back, Ben. Dad’s dead, he can’t hurt us anymore. Please come back.”

Today is a whirlwind of abnormalities, Ben thinks. The _Academy_ —brought back from the past. Five—lost and now found. Dad—alive, and now…

Now dead.

“I can’t go back. I’m sorry, I—I can’t. I can’t!”

“Why not!” Five reaches up to wipe at his eyes with his fists, smearing tears across his cheeks. Ben has never seen him look as much as a child as he does now.

Mary steps away from the rest of the silent crew, all of them watching as they hold their breath.

“Ben,” she says, soft and pitying. She can see right through him, he knows. “You have to tell him.”

Ben shakes his head stiffly. “I can’t,” he mumbles. “I can’t…”

“Who are you?”

Mary doesn’t acknowledge Five, instead moving closer to her captain. “You have to.” She adjusts the clasps of his cloak in a familiar gesture. Anne hovers behind her nervously, just far away enough to not be a part of this—just close enough to integrate herself if the need arises. “You know you do.”

He does. He doesn’t want to. He knows he has to. He can’t. He can’t.

Tammy’s hand—where did he come from?—pats his shoulder. Ben looks to the boy, who really is not much younger than him—they were both toeing the line between _boy_ and _man_ when they joined the _Horror’_ s crew; drinks in his sympathy—his pity. Tammy always knows to do what’s right. God. He can’t. He has to.

Ben crouches down, so instead of Five looking up at him, it’s the other way around. Mary and Tammy step away, Tammy’s hand falling away from Ben’s shoulder. Ben looks up at his crying brother.

He’s so young—Ben can barely remember being that age. He looks like he’s only just setting foot off dry land, only just beginning to realize what kinds of things reside at sea. Ben doesn’t remember that for himself at all. It never happened—he’d known what there was to find in the ocean blue long before he first boarded the _Academy._

“Five…”

“Why won’t you go back?” Five cuts him off with what’s nearing a sob. “Ben, I thought you were _dead._ They still think you’re dead, why won’t you go back? You’re our brother. You’re _my_ brother, Ben, come _back_ —” His voice cracks.

“It’s… I’m sorry. I wish I could. But, Five, I’m not- this isn’t- just… I’m not what you think I am.”

“Yes you _are_! You’re Ben! What else could you be?”

Ben takes a deep breath. He can feel Mary and Tammy watching him as they hustle the rest of the crew away—this is something he has to do alone, without an audience watching his every move, no matter how well-meaning they are.

Ben is silent until they’re alone on deck. The wind blows through Five’s hair, gently tossing it around his face. The _Umbrella Academy_ is still nearby—he doesn’t doubt there are telescopes trained on them, watching him and Five with an eagle eye.

“I’m not… Or, I _am,_ I’m… I’m dead, Five.”

Five freezes.

“...What…?”

He sounds so _small._ So… Ben can’t think of any words. There’s just him, and Five, and the admittance hanging between them, thick like butter. If he had a knife, he could cut into the silence.

He’s very familiar with the five stages of grief. When he died, he… He didn’t grieve himself, exactly. He grieved everything he had left behind.

“I’m dead,” Ben says. It doesn’t hurt to say it—he’s had time to get used to it. It hurts to be the one telling his brother.

“No… No, you’re not, you’re right here! You can’t be dead.”

“I am,” Ben says firmly. “I am.”

“No!” Five clenches his teeth. “No, you’re _not!_ I just got you back, you _can’t be_ dead!”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t—there’s no changing this, Five. I died a long time ago.”

Five’s hands are shaking, clenched in fists at his sides. He takes a breath, and his eyes flash with anger. “Liar.” Five’s always hated it when people lied to him.

“No—no, I’m… I wish I was, Five. I wish I was.”

“ _Liar_! You’re not dead, you’re _right here._ You’re right here.” Five sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than anything.

Ben's stomach rumbles.

"Look, even if you _are_ dead, you can still—you can still go back! You can come with me, and, and it'll be okay, you can go back! You can come back.”

Ben shakes his head, and Five lets out a wet sob. “Ben, _please—_ ”

He gives in and pulls his brother into a hug. Five is crying against his shoulder, leaving damp patches in the fabric of Ben’s cloak. He clings to his back, muffling his sobbing unsuccessfully. Ben doesn’t say anything, moving his icy hand up and down his brother’s back.

“You can’t—why did—this isn’t _fair,_ ” hiccoughs Five. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t there, and you _died_ and I couldn’t _do anything_ —”

“I know,” tells him Ben. “I know, it’s okay—it’s okay.”

“No it’s _not!_ I should’ve _been there!_ I didn’t even—I didn’t know you were dead until I got back! I didn’t _know_ and you were _dead_ and I _should’ve stopped it._ ”

“Hey,” Ben says. “No, you—you couldn’t’ve. There wasn’t a way, Five. Even if, even if you _were_ there, you couldn’t’ve stopped it. Sometimes,” he gives his brothers a squeeze. “Sometimes there isn’t a way.”

Five keeps crying. Ben doesn’t know how long it is, seconds ticking by like grains of sand falling into the bottom half of an hourglass. Eventually, his tears quiet down. He doesn’t let go of Ben.

“...I’ll miss you.”

“I know,” says Ben. “I’ll miss you too, Five.”

“I’m sorry you died.”

“It’s okay—It’s okay.”

It is okay. He’s had time—a long time. He’s dead, and he’s fine with that. He misses his family, but…

He’s got a new one right here.

Five lets go of Ben and steps away, leaving his brother across from him. His eyes are red-rimmed, but he’s calm, now. Ben has accepted his death. Five will too, eventually.

Five looks toward where the _Academy_ gently bobs on the water. “I should…” he trails off.

“Go on,” says Ben. “Tell them I say hi.”

“I will,” says Five, and his words are loaded with something meaningful—a promise that just might mean the world. “I will.”

Ben pushes him toward the ship gently—a gesture far too simple; a light shove, like siblings are meant to do. Five looks at Ben one more time.

“Bye, Ben. I love you.” His words start soft and end softer, the ending of his sentences wisped away in the wind—barely reaching Ben’s ears.

“Me, too,” Ben says. Five blinks sadly—Ben knows that wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear—and then he’s gone.

Across the stretch of water between them, on the deck of the _Umbrella Academy,_ Ben sees a flash of blue, and then figures rushing toward the one that just appeared. He watches them fuss over the boy, checking to see he’s okay.

Josie’s quiet footsteps stop right behind him. “...’S gonna be okay.” She reaches out and grabs Ben’s hand—just as much of a scared child as the rest of them.

“I know,” says Ben—and he means it. He squeezes her hand. “I know.”

The _Umbrella Academy_ and _Deathly Horror_ part ways; drifting away into the foggy distance, Ben holds Josie’s hand—and doesn’t look back. As the sun rises, the ghost ship disappears, almost like it was never there at all.

**Author's Note:**

> so, that's that! a ghost ship au! :] i hope you liked it!
> 
> once again HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVE i hope you enjoyed this, and i wish you a good new year! age! you're old now sdfiusdkj ILY!!!<333
> 
> this is actually one of if not the longest single thing i've ever written, so i'm proud of it! if you want to know more about my OCs feel free to ask!! :]
> 
> as always, you can find me on [tumblr](https://seven-misfits.tumblr.com/) @seven-misfits! if you liked it, leave a comment, i'd love to know what you thought! thanks for reading!! :] <33


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